The formation of high-quality semiconductor nanocrystals, with well-controlled size and shape as well as well-confined surface passivation, can be achieved by controlling the thermodynamics and kinetics during the nucleation and growth of nanocrystals. However, the separation of the nucleation and growth stages is a prerequisite for producing high-quality nanocrystals which generally require uniform shape and a tight size distribution. When nucleation occurs concurrently with the growth of nanocrystals, a broad nanocrystal size distribution generally results.
In colloidal synthesis, methods are known which separate the nucleation stage from the nanocrystal growth stage. The key part of this synthetic method is the injection of room-temperature organometallic precursors into well-stirred, hot organic solvents. Nucleation takes place immediately after the injection and continues until the temperature and the precursor concentration both drop below critical threshold levels. In this case, the nucleation time is determined by the rate of the precursor injection and the mass transfer in the reaction system. Therefore, rapid precursor injection and strong stirring leads to a short nucleation time, and thus achieves a separation between nucleation and growth stages. This method has led to synthesis of a variety of high-quality nanocrystals ranging from II-VI (e.g., CdS and CdSe) and III-V (e.g., InP and InAs) to IV-VI (e.g., PbS and PbSe) semiconductors, which are of great importance to applications including biological labeling, LEDs, lasers, and solar cells.
However, the injection-based synthetic method is not suitable for large-scale, industrial preparation (e.g., hundreds of kilograms), even though it can be scaled up to the order of grams. Industrial preparation of nanocrystals requires batch reactors that can be tens of thousands of times larger than those in research laboratories. In this industrial case, the rapid injection of precursors needed to separate nucleation and growth is very difficult to achieve. Moreover, the limitations of mass transfer in the industrial reactors further diminish the merits of the injection method. Therefore, the injection-based synthetic method cannot produce high-quality nanocrystals on an industrial scale. To overcome this difficulty, new synthetic methods that do not require the injection of precursors are needed.
The formation of high-quality nanocrystals is often favored at high temperatures (e.g., >200° C.). This creates a major challenge for making monodispersed nanocrystals through a non-injection-based synthesis, because such a synthesis involves a period of increasing temperature over a broad range, such as from room temperature to over 200° C. This broad temperature range often leads to concurrent nucleation and growth of nanocrystals in the syntheses, and results in products with poor monodispersity. Thus, although some reports have detailed one-pot synthesis of semiconductor nanocrystals without precursor injection, the quality (in terms of shape and size distribution) of the nanocrystal product is not comparable to that of the nanocrystals made by the precursor injection method. For example, nanocrystals made without precursor injection exhibit optical properties that are inferior to those produced by the injection method, such as providing fewer exciton absorption peaks, which are critical for nanocrystal applications in advanced optical and electronic devices.